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        <p class="pfirst">For four centuries the noise of controversy has raged round
            the cradle of Typography. Volumes have been written,
            lives have been spent, fortunes have been wasted, communities
            have been stirred, societies have been organised,
            a literature has been developed, to find an answer to the
            famous triple question: “When, where, and by whom
            was found out the unspeakably useful art of printing
            books?” And yet the world to-day is little nearer a
            finite answer to the question than it was when Ulric Zel indited his memorable
            narrative to the <em>Cologne Chronicle</em> in 1499. Indeed, the dust of battle has added
            to, rather than diminished, the mysterious clouds which envelope the problem,
            and we are tempted to seek refuge in an agnosticism which almost refuses to
            believe that printing ever had an inventor.</p>

        <p>It would be neither suitable nor profitable to encumber an investigation of
            that part of the History of Typography which relates to the types and type-making
            of the fifteenth century by any attempt to discuss the vexed question of
            the Invention of the Art. The man who invented Typography was doubtless
            the man who invented movable types. Where the one is discovered, we have
            also found the other. But, meanwhile, it is possible to avail ourselves of
            whatever evidence exists as to the nature of the types he and his successors used,
            and as to the methods by which those types were produced,
            and possibly to arrive at some conclusions respecting the earliest practices of the
            Art of Typefounding
            in the land and in the age in which it first saw the light.</p>

        <p>No one has done more to clear the way for a free
            investigation of all questions relating to the origin
            of printing than Dr. Van der Linde, in his able essay,
            <em>The Haarlem Legend</em>,
            <span class="note" data-note="01" id="note-01"><em>The Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing by
                    Lourens Janszoon Coster, critically examined.</em> From the Dutch by J.
                H. Hessels, with an introduction and classified list of the Costerian
                Incunabula. London, 1871. 8vo.</span> which, while disposing ruthlessly of
            the fiction of Coster’s invention, lays down the important
            principle, too often neglected by writers on the subject,
            that the essence of Typography consists in the mobility of
            the types, and that, therefore, it is not a development of
            the long practised art of printing from fixed blocks, but
            an entirely distinct invention.</p>

        <p>The principle is so important, and Dr. Van der Linde’s words are so
            emphatic, that we make no apology for quoting them:―</p>

        <p>“I cannot repeat often enough that, when we speak of Typography and its
            invention, nothing is meant, or rather nothing must be meant, but printing with
            <em>loose</em> (separate, moveable) types (be they letters, musical notes, or other figures),
            which therefore, in distinction from letters cut on wooden or metal plates, may be
            put together or separated according to inclination. One thing therefore is certain:
            he who did not invent printing with moveable types, did, as far as Typography
            goes, invent nothing. What material was used first of all in this invention; of
            what metal the first letters, the patrices (engraved punches) and matrices were
            made; by whom and when the leaden matrices and brass patrices were replaced
            by brass matrices and steel patrices; .&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. all this belongs to the secondary
            question of the technical execution of the principal idea: multiplication of
            books by means of multiplication of letters, multiplication of letters by means
            of their durability, and repeated use of the same letters, <em>i.e.</em>, by means of the
            independence (looseness) of each individual letter (moveableness).”—P. 19.</p>

        <p>If this principle be adopted—and we can hardly imagine it questioned—it
            will be obvious that a large class of works which usually occupy a prominent
            place in inquiries into the origin of Printing, have but slight bearing on the
            history of Typography. The block books of the fifteenth century had little
            direct connection with the art that followed and eclipsed them.<span class="note" data-note="02" id="note-02">Xylography did not become extinct
                for more than half a
                century after the invention of Typography. The last block book known
                was printed in Venice in 1510.</span>
            In the one respect of marking the early use of printing for the instruction of mankind, the
            block books and the first works of Typography proper claim an equal interest;
            but, as regards their mechanical production, the one feature they possess in
            common is a quality shared also by the playing-cards,
            pictures, seals, stamps, brands, and all the other applications of the principle of impression which had
            existed in one form or another from time immemorial.</p>

        <p>It is reasonable to suppose that the first idea of movable type may have
            been suggested to the mind of the inventor by a study of the works of a
            xylographic printer, and an observation of the cumbrous and wearisome method
            by which his books were produced. The toil involved in first painfully tracing
            the characters and figures, reversed, on the wood, then of engraving them,
            and, finally, of printing them with the frotton, would appear—in the case, at any
            rate, of the small school-books, for the production of which this process was largely
            resorted to—scarcely less tedious than copying the required number by the deft pen
            of a scribe. And even if, at a later period, the bookmakers so far facilitated their
            labours as to write their text in the ordinary manner on prepared paper, or with
            prepared ink, and so transfer their copy, after the manner of the Chinese, on to the
            wood, the labour expended in proportion to the result, and the uselessness of the
            blocks when once their work was done, would doubtless impress an inventive
            genius with a sense of dissatisfaction and impatience. We can imagine him
            examining the first page of an <em>Abecedarium</em>, on which would be engraved, in
            three lines, with a clear space between each character, the letters of the alphabet,
            and speculating, as Cicero had speculated centuries before,<span class="note" data-note="03" id="note-03">Hic ego non mirer esse quemquam qui
                sibi persuadeat
                .&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. mundum effici .&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. ex concursione fortuitâ! Hoc qui existimet
                fieri potuisse, non intelligo cur non idem putet si innumerabiles
                unius et viginti formæ litterarum, vel aureæ, vel qualeslibet, aliquò
                conjiciantur, posse ex his in terram excussis, annales Ennii, ut
                deinceps legi possint, effici” (<em>De Nat. Deor.</em>, lib. ii). Cicero was
                not the only ancient writer who entertained the idea of mobile letters.
                Quintilian suggests the use of ivory letters for teaching children
                to read while playing: “Eburneas litterarum formas in ludum offere”
                (<em>Inst. Orat.</em>, i, cap. 1); and Jerome, writing to Læta, propounds the
                same idea: “Fiant ei (Paulæ) litteræ vel buxeæ vel eburneæ, et suis
                nominibus appellentur. Ludat in eis ut et lusus ipse eruditio fiat.”</span>
            on the possibilities presented by the combination in indefinite variety of those twenty-five symbols.
            Being a practical man as well as a theorist, we may suppose he would attempt
            to experiment on the little wood block in his hand, and by sawing off first
            the lines, and then some of the letters in the lines, attempt to arrange his little
            types into a few short words. A momentous experiment, and fraught with the
            greatest revolution the world has ever known!</p>


        <p>No question has aroused more interest, or excited keener discussion in the
            history of printing, than that of the use of movable wooden types as a first
            stage in the passage from Xylography to Typography. Those who write on the
            affirmative side of the question profess to see in the earlier typographical works,
            as well as in the historical statements handed down by the
            old authorities, the clearest evidence that wooden types were used, and that several of the most
            famous works of the first printers were executed by their means.</p>

        <p>As regards the latter source of their confidence, it is at least remarkable
            that no single writer of the fifteenth century makes 
            the slightest allusion to the
            use of wooden types. Indeed, it was not till Bibliander, in 1548,<span class="note" data-note="04" id="note-04"><em>In Commentatione de ratione
                    communi omnium linguarum et
                    literarum.</em> Tiguri, 1548, p. 80.</span>
            first mentioned
            and described them, that anything professing to be a record on the subject
            existed. “First they cut their letters,” he says, “on wood blocks the size of an
            entire page, but because the labour and cost of that way was so great, they devised
            movable wooden types, perforated and joined one to the other by a thread.”</p>

        <p>The legend, once started, found no lack of sponsors, and the typographical
            histories of the sixteenth century and onward abound with testimonies confirmatory
            more or less of Bibliander’s statement. Of these testimonies, those only
            are worthy of attention which profess to be based on actual inspection of the
            alleged perforated wooden types. Specklin<span class="note"
                data-note="05" id="note-05">In <em>Chronico Argentoratensi</em>, <em>m.s.</em> ed. Jo. Schilterus,
                p. 442. “Ich habe die erste press, auch die buchstaben gesehen, waren
                von holtz geschnitten, auch gäntze wörter und syllaben, hatten löchle,
                und fasst man an ein schnur nacheinander mit einer nadel, zoge sie
                darnach den zeilen in die länge,” etc.</span>
            (who died in 1589) asserts that he
            saw some of these relics at Strasburg. Angelo Roccha,<span
                class="note" data-note="06" id="note-06"><em>De Bibliothecâ Vaticanâ.</em> Romæ, 1591, p. 412.
                “Characteres enim a primis illis inventoribus non ita eleganter et
                expedite, ut a nostris fieri solet, sed filo in litterarum foramen
                immisso connectebantur, sicut Venetiis id genus typos me vidisse
                memini.”</span>
            in 1591, vouches for the
            existence of similar letters (though he does not say whether wood or metal) at
            Venice. Paulus Pater,<span class="note" data-note="07"
                id="note-07"><em>De Germaniæ Miraculo</em>, etc. Lipsiæ, 1710, p. 10.
                “&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. ligneos typos, ex buxi frutice, perforatos in medio, ut zonâ
                colligari unâ jungique commode possint, ex Fausti officina reliquos,
                Moguntiæ aliquando me conspexisse memini.”</span>
            in 1710, stated that he had once seen some belonging to
            Fust at Mentz; Bodman, as late as 1781, saw the same types in a worm-eaten
            condition at Mentz; while Fischer,<span class="note"
                data-note="08" id="note-08"><em>Essai sur les Monumens Typographiques de Jean Gutenburg.</em>
                Mayence, an 10, 1802, p. 39.</span>
            in 1802, stated that these precious relics were
            used as a sort of token of honour to be bestowed on worthy apprentices on the
            occasion of their finishing their term.</p>

        
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